e you will vote with us, Miss Harleth, and
Mr. Grandcourt too, though he is not an archer." Gwendolen and
Grandcourt paused to join the group, and found that the voting turned
on the project of a picnic archery meeting to be held in Cardell Chase,
where the evening entertainment would be more poetic than a ball under,
chandeliers--a feast of sunset lights along the glades and through the
branches and over the solemn tree-tops.

Gwendolen thought the scheme delightful--equal to playing Robin Hood
and Maid Marian: and Mr. Grandcourt, when appealed to a second time,
said it was a thing to be done; whereupon Mr. Lush, who stood behind
Lady Brackenshaw's elbow, drew Gwendolen's notice by saying with a
familiar look and tone to Grandcourt, "Diplow would be a good place for
the meeting, and more convenient: there's a fine bit between the oaks
toward the north gate."

Impossible to look more unconscious of being addressed than Grandcourt;
but Gwendolen took a new survey of the speaker, deciding, first, that
he must be on terms of intimacy with the tenant of Diplow, and,
secondly, that she would never, if she could help it, let him come
within a yard of her. She was subject to physical antipathies, and Mr.
Lush's prominent eyes, fat though not clumsy figure, and strong black
gray-besprinkled hair of frizzy thickness, which, with the rest of his
prosperous person, was enviable to many, created one of the strongest
of her antipathies. To be safe from his looking at her, she murmured to
Grandcourt, "I should like to continue walking."

He obeyed immediately; but when they were thus away from any audience,
he spoke no word for several minutes, and she, out of a half-amused,
half-serious inclination for experiment, would not speak first. They
turned into the large conservatory, beautifully lit up with Chinese
lamps. The other couples there were at a distance which would not have
interfered with any dialogue, but still they walked in silence until
they had reached the farther end where there was a flush of pink light,
and the second wide opening into the ball-room. Grandcourt, when they
had half turned round, paused and said languidly--

"Do you like this kind of thing?"

If the situation had been described to Gwendolen half an hour before,
she would have laughed heartily at it, and could only have imagined
herself returning a playful, satirical answer. But for some mysterious
reason--it was a mystery of which she had a faint won